Long wait over for Queen Vicki

In celebration of her 50th birthday and the prom she never attended, Perdue joins with friends at ’70s-themed ‘school event’ for a royal experience

DALLAS TWP. -- When Vicki Perdue of Dallas heard her name called as prom queen on Saturday night, she jumped up and down, squealed “Oh my God” and adjusted a tiara atop her long blond curls.

The tiara fit remarkably well, master of ceremonies Steve Traver teased. And, that was no wonder.

In fact, she’d arranged the entire prom to celebrate her 50th birthday and, since she’d missed her Wichita, Kan., high school prom in 1978, who better to reign over this celebration?

“I want to dedicate this crown to all those kids who didn’t go to their proms,” she said, addressing close to 150 guests at the Idetown Volunteer Fire Department Social Hall. “I want to thank you all for making my dream come true.”

Friends had pitched in by bringing food – everything from cold shrimp to deviled eggs to stromboli. They also decorated the fire hall with hand-made palm trees and wore prom attire, in some cases, really vintage prom attire.

“You look awful – ’76, right?” someone murmured in a congratulatory kind of way as Ron Smith of Dallas arrived sporting a shoulder-length brown wig and a white tuxedo jacket with brown trim.

For more of a ’70s-lounge-singer look, John Churchfield of Dallas wore a gold chain, enormous white platform shoes that shimmered like a rainbow, and a fluffy black wig.

Several women wore corsages on their wrists or pinned to their dresses. One of them, Molly Davies of Dallas, also made the effort to give her hair “wings” in the style of the original “Charlie’s Angels.”

Among those in fancy attire, Christiana Bartolini of West Wyoming found a ballerina-like dress with a multi-color tulle skirt at a Tunkhannock antique shop.

Melissa Berti of Dallas borrowed a lacy pink gown from a friend who had a closet full of prom leftovers. “This was the most frilly,” Berti explained.

The prom queen herself wore a floor-length, lime green gown – “Oh, boy, is it lime green,” she said – with frills and flounces and laces tied in the back.

Ruthie O’Dell of Plains Township rented a light blue Cinderella-like dress from Costumes By Barbara. “I think I’m supposed to be the tooth fairy,” she said. But, O’Dell added, she felt like a princess. “I do, I do, and that’s so different from my regular life, where I’m a bus driver.”

That’s what Saturday’s celebration was – a night to remember, no matter if you ever did the hustle or slow-danced to Barry Manilow’s “Looks Like We Made It” during the 1970s.

For Perdue, it wasn’t as if she’d been obsessing for decades about skipping the rite-of-passage prom as a high school senior, but, she said, “you do feel as if you’re missing something.”

That feeling intensified after she went to her 30th-anniversary high school reunion, she said.

Her husband of nearly 25 years, Vernon Perdue, said if he’d been her boyfriend in high school, he would have made sure she went to the prom.

But Vernon, now a civil engineer, went to high school in Virginia. There he dutifully attended four proms which, he noted, seemed to mean more to the girls than to the guys.

At her high school in Kansas, Vicki Perdue dated a boy who wasn’t interested in dressing up and escorting her to a prom.

When she graduated early and took a job behind a Montgomery Ward candy counter, that also contributed to her not going to the prom.

Her friends describe Vicki, who now works for an online book seller, as a generous person. On Saturday, she proved that as she shared the limelight with a friend, Jim Dimirco of Wilkes-Barre, who also turned 50 this month.

Dimirco’s girlfriend, Cindy Smith, coaxed him out to “Vicki’s party,” a bit later than the other guests. When they walked through the door, everyone yelled “Surprise!” and he realized the party was for him, too.

The rest of her prom court included Vernon Perdue with Molly Davies and John Churchfield with MariJo Gillette.

“She’s one of a kind,” the Perdues’ daughter, Ashley, 22, said of her mother. “She knows how to have fun, and she’s good at it.” The couple also has a daughter, Amy, 21.

After the crowning, the prom queen and her guests danced, courtesy of a disc jockey, to music that spanned several eras.

“It took a village to put this together, and I have a great village,” Vicki said, sighing with satisfaction as she took a sip of bubblegum-flavored vodka.

To see additional photos from Vicki Perdue’s prom/birthday celebration, visit www.times

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